“ That I haven’t figured out yet,” Katherine said with a little laugh. “But I will.”
She made this whole mess sound as if it was just a challenging math problem, or as if she was working on a scheme to get Mom and Dad to let her stay up late on a school night or have nothing but ice cream for dinner. This was just an intriguing puzzle to her. It wasn’t her life.
“Whatever,” Jonah said, jerking his arm away from Katherine’s grasp. “You can stay here until you figure everything out. I’m going home.”
He half-expected Katherine to follow him out—she was his sister, after all, not Chip’s friend—but when he glanced back, they’d both turned around to huddle over the computer together.
Fine, Jonah thought. See if I care.
When he’d climbed up the stairs to the first level of Chip’s house, he could hear a TV siren blaring from the family room. A woman—presumably Chip’s mom—said unhappily, “You always have to watch the blood-and-guts shows.” Jonah thought about walking back toward the family room, poking his head in, and informing Chip’s parents, “You really ought to know what’s going on, down in your basement. Chip’s looking for a whole other identity that doesn’t involve you.” Instead he turned through the dark dining room and slipped out the front door.
Outside, a new thought occurred to him. Chip had pretty much admitted that he had a crush on Katherine—what if Katherine had a crush on Chip, too? What if that’s what this was all about?
Unaccountably, Jonah suddenly felt very lonely. He was walking down a dark street, all by himself, the trees casting eerie shadows across the sidewalk. Hey, kidnappers, he thought, you want to get me back? This would be a great time to snatch me away!
He shivered, even though it wasn’t the least bit cold for October.
I should have told Mom and Dad, he thought. About that second letter, if nothing else.
But he knew why he hadn’t. They would have made a federal case out of it, getting upset, calling the cops…Jonah didn’t want that. Like Katherine, he wanted Mom and Dad to stay normal. And now he really couldn’t tell them, not when they were already so freaked out by the meeting with Mr. Reardon. It would be cruel to spring this on them too.
The street curved slightly, and there was a break in the trees, so he had a full view of his own house. Mom had chrysanthemums planted along the sidewalk and along the front fence—which was actually white picket. Mom and Dad were such believers in all those cliches. The living room bay window curved out invitingly, the lights blazed…home looked like such a safe place. Jonah just wanted to walk in, crawl into bed, pull the covers over his face, and sleep until all the scary things in his life disappeared.
He glanced longingly up at the two second-story windows that looked into his room. The lights weren’t on in his room, but light was spilling in from the hallway, so he could make out dim shapes: his dresser, his desk, the posts of his bed….
One of the shapes in his room moved.
While Jonah watched, a dark shape—no, a person—eased the door of Jonah’s room shut, blocking out the light, plunging the windows into complete darkness. But then a smaller light—a flashlight? a penlight?—clicked on, hovering over Jonah’s desk.
Jonah took off running.
FOURTEEN
Jonah burst in through the front door.
“Mom? Dad?” he called accusingly. If they were snooping in his room, he was going to be really angry. He hadn’t started flunking out of school as a cry for help—there was no reason for them to search through his things.
Mom peeked out from the kitchen, drying her hands on a dish towel.
“Dad and I are back here,” she said.
Jonah sped around the corner, saw Dad sitting at the computer. Dad hastily clicked out of whatever he was looking at, but not before Jonah caught a glimpse of the FBI crest— Thanks, Dad, you really think you have to hide that from me? Jonah decided he didn’t have time to think about that right now.
“Then who’s in my room?” he demanded.
“No one’s in your room,” Mom said, sounding baffled.
Jonah whirled around and rushed up the stairs. He shoved open the door to his room, flipped on the light.
Nobody was there.
Jonah jerked the closet door open; he got down on his hands and knees and looked under the bed. He looked beside his desk, behind the door, all the places he’d ever used during hide-and-seek games when he was little.
“Jonah, honey, what are you doing?” Mom asked, appearing in his doorway.
“I thought I saw someone in my room,” Jonah said. “When I was outside.”
Mom peeked into the closet and under the bed.
“There’s nobody here,” she said. She took in a shaky breath. “Really, Jonah, if there’d been an intruder, we would have heard him. You know how those stairs creak.”
Maybe whoever it was didn’t use the stairs, Jonah thought. Maybe he used a ladder at the back of the house….
Or maybe it was someone who could just appear and disappear at will, like Katherine’s ghost.
Jonah didn’t want to think about that. But he also didn’t go to the back of the house to look for a ladder.
Dad walked into the room and laid his hands comfortingly on Mom’s shoulders.
“Jonah, if you’d really thought there was an intruder, you shouldn’t have come rushing up here, putting yourself in danger. You should have called the police,” he said.
Jonah sat down on his bed.
“It was just my imagination, I guess,” he said sulkily. “If I’d called the police, they would have been mad.”
“But you would have been safe,” Dad said.
Mom sat down beside Jonah on the bed. She patted his shoulder.
“You’ve just had a hard day,” she said. “It’s been a little overwhelming for all of us.”